Snacks

These days I'm hungry all the time.  Maybe because this guy is growing like a weed.  

If we lived in town I'd eat a lot of pizza.  

As it is, this is my favorite snack.  Sweet and salty and yummy.

I need some variety though.  What's YOUR favorite snack?

Weed Destroyer

 My Dad got me this amazing tool.  Fiskars Uproot Weeder

You can pull out sand burrs without getting them in your fingers!  

You can pull out giant creeping poky vines right at the root!

You can pull out weeds as the sun goes down and feel sad (SAD!) that it's too dark to see more weeds.  

I LOVE it.  I feel hopeful about the battle for the first time ever.  

Lindsay!

My friend Lindsay is biking across the USA and she stopped at my house!  Here's her blog-it's awfully fun to follow along. 

 She came and spoke to the kids at my school-here's a super cropped picture-I had to crop out all of the other kids.  It was a great presentation-she highlighted the importance of wearing a helmet and I was so happy to already do something "Librarian-y" like schedule a speaker!  Thanks, Lins!

And because visiting my house is all about work-she came along with me on errands, helped me take Katie and Jimmy to the Dr., and we fixed my couch!

 Well, OK.  Eric came by to borrow some foil for the farm and he got roped in too.   If you've visited us in the past two years, I know you are thankful.

We took her to see the World's Largest Hairball, and to get the world's best sno cone (grape!), and generally had a blast.  

Anna showed her how she could ride with no training wheels.

It was a wonderfully fun visit.  I hope she can come back again someday.

Then I had to drop her off and watch her pedal away.  So hard!  Good Luck and be safe Lindsay!

3 weeks old

He sleeps most of the time.

 He's calm and sweet and snuggly.

 Every once in a while he'll find that thumb.

 His big sister Katie messes with him constantly and he doesn't seem to mind.

 He loves to be swaddled.

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
The soul that rises with us, our life’s star,
    Hath had elsewhere its setting,
      And cometh from afar.
    Not in entire forgetfulness,
    And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory, do we come
    From God, who is our home:Heaven lies about us in our infancy.

William Wordsworth  Ode:  Intimations of Immortality

Mean-ness

Really?  Do new nursing Mamas really need to see her belly?  Because we don't look like that.

Tumbleweed 21

 This year The Tumbleweed Festival added another night of music!  On Friday night 9 local bands played.  I loved this!

Margaret and Mary came to meet baby Jimmy.  In the rain.  

 

 Because it never rains here, we just kept sitting in the rain, thinking it would quit any minute.  Here's Katie running around getting wet and listening to Russ and Debbie Tidwell-our debate coach and his wife and in charge of the festival this year.  It was fun to listen to them play.

Everyone's favorite cousin came along.  For most of the entire weekend he had at least one child on his back.  He is a treasure.

 Then Matthew and Joe and Zac played.  They'd never played together.  Not even a practice, since we had that baby and all.  Sounded great.  They played an Avett Brothers song, and Anna gasped- "I love this song!"

Katie thought that everyone at the festival was family-and she was close to right.  We had close to 40 people there who we count as family.  Here's Kiki feeding her a bierock.  I think everyone you can see in the background belongs to us in some way.

Even Anna got some Jimmy time in.

Uncle Steven got some snuggles.

And Uncle Mark proved he can bond with nephews even before they're old enough to be bribed with treats.

It was a perfect weekend.  You should come next year!  Could we shoot for 50 people in my section?

Visitors!

This girl  is at my house right now!

And this family is in town.

And my favorite event-The Tumbleweed Festival- was this weekend.

So I'm too busy having fun!  More Jimmy soon.  :)

Crochet Shawl

I actually made something for myself!

I found this pattern last fall-maybe in an email from Lion Brand?  Simple Crochet Shrug



I bought the yarn for it and slooowwly, at night and at the cabin and in those days before Threesie when I was trying to sit still, I finished it!  It was super simple.

Mine is, of course, longer than the one in the picture because I crochet so loosely.  I followed the measurement guidelines and I think it'll work just fine, but it is bigger.  I used my favorite yarn, Lion Brand Homespun, in Barley.  

It's very soft and snuggly and Anna already wants to steal it.

A reason to look forward to Fall!

Katie's favorite shirt and grin

If Katie spies this little blue shirt in the drawer, or, more likely, in the clean clothes to be put away, she immediately tugs on her own shirt to take it off and switch it for this one.  It is awfully cute.  

What you get if you ask Katie to "smile!".  

Back to School Skirt

I wanted to make a Back to School Skirt with Anna, but I really didn't know if we would get to it.  One morning she came down to pick out fabric and found a piece of an apron I had goofed up and asked if we could make a skirt out of it.  It was brilliant-because three sides were already finished, so all we had to do was sew it together and put in a casing for elastic.  

I let her run the machine all by myself-which was very hard.  I tried not to be hover-y, and she did a fantastic job.  She went nice and slow and did a wonderful job sewing in a straight line.  I could not figure out how to explain moving the elastic through the casing-she kept doing it backwards.   We'll have to work on that some more.  

Here she is, proud in her new skirt.

She's very excited to wear it to school.  Today!!

Jimmy's first photo shoot

Remember when I took these pictures of Anna and Katie in their matching froggy pj's from Auntie Sus?

This summer at Goodwill I spotted another pair-in 18 months!  So Katie could wear those and Jimmy could wear the newborn outfit and Anna still fit into hers.  More matching clothes pictures!  I love matching.  

Jimmy is already worried about this.  

I somehow caught this beautiful one of Katie. 

Jimmy calmed down a lot once his sisters were on the scene.  He just didn't want to be the only one in froggy jammies, I guess.  

This one is MJL's favorite.  Katie doesn't LOOK malicious.  

See, most of the time she really loves him.  

And we even got some with three kids looking nice.  Thanks kiddos!

Jimmy's Journal

MJL wrote the "story" of how Jimmy got here, which I'm thankful for, because people love to read birth stories and there's something weird and non-girl in me that just does NOT want to do that.  My story would read something like "Yeah, I went to the hospital and had a baby-what of it?"  in a bored/confrontational tone.  I don't know why.

But here is a lovely post about how Jimmy got here.

We Had a Baby and It Was OK

The post title alludes to this funny comic strip we read in college.

The only thing I would add is that the first thing I did when I woke up and thought we were finally going to have a baby was run downstairs and finish Chelsea's quilt top!  Woo hoo!  

Jimmy's first day home

We woke up on the first morning as a family of five in our own house, and Daddy had to go to work.  :(  Luckily we had time for some breakfast together first.

Then we all got to work.  Anna helped unload the dishwasher.

Katie went around sitting in things that Jimmy was using and re-claiming them as her own.

Jimmy took naps and was cute.

I was super thankful for my pregnancy splurges-soft sweatpants and new flip flops (with arch support!) and pretty toes.

Jimmy did more important work.  

Katie kept an eye on things.

It took her less than one hour to think to go get her stool so she could see better.
  

Jimmy was worn out from all of that cuteness and eating.

So he slept.  My goal was to try and be realistic about what I could accomplish.  I was probably too tired at the end of the day, but there were things left undone on my list, so I count that as a victory.